


The Wall Military Acdemy: PREQUEL: Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

by ThomE_Gemcity_06



Series: The Wall Military Academy [4]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Drama, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injured!Arya, Prequel, Rule Breaking, Siblings, Stubborn!Arya, Tree Climbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 13:17:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8057896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThomE_Gemcity_06/pseuds/ThomE_Gemcity_06
Summary: Against her mother's express wishes, Arya climbs that tree in the backyard of their brownstone, dragging Bran and Robb along with her to add to the fun, only to cause Catelyn more grief (and Ned more stress) after a fright.





	The Wall Military Acdemy: PREQUEL: Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

**Author's Note:**

> **So this was a intended flashback/dream/delusion for Arya while she was 'dying' that I wanted to put into the Epilogue of WW,W &W, but then I found myself writing about more of a score about Arya breaking her arm when she was a kid instead, in reference to "tW(M)A-INTERLUDE" Chapter 1 (+Stark Notes), and this is how it turned out. :) **
> 
> **So this is a prequel to the three fics. Enjoy!**
> 
> **The Ages are listed as the following:  
>  Robb - 12  
> Sansa - 10  
> Arya - 9  
> Bran - 7  
> Rickon - 4**

**The Wall Academy:**   
**Elite Military Training Depot**   
**...Trilogy...**   
**(Extra! Extra! Read All About It!)**

_Prequel; One-Shot:_ —

Arya felt free, unburdened, unbothered. Like she could fly or float like a cloud or fall like a leaf guided by the breeze. Anger and frustration left her like a hat swept away in a light gale. She was left feeling light and sunny—for as long as she could be up here, it would be always.

She could feel the wind brush against her skin, just as it stroked against the surface of every leaf in the grand oak tree that lived in their brownstone's backyard in Winterfell. She could feel the rough bark scratch against the soles of her bare feet, curled around the top of the branch holding her aloft.

She grinned, looking about through the fluttering leaves at the world around her. She felt so big and so powerful, even if she was just 9-years-old. She felt she was on top of the world! It was so exhilarating up here, so free, her heart pounding in her chest. She could see over the two-story roof of the brownstone, see across the rows and rows of other houses. Behind her, in the distance, she could even see the vague and blurry outline of the Athletic Proficiency Assessment Stadium.

Oh, how she wanted to go there. Only boys got to run through the course, and only those that were 15- to18-years-old. The Starks never went, and they wouldn't until it was Robb's time to run the course 3-years from now. Sometimes, she wished she was a boy so she could do all the cool and fun and exciting things that only boys seemed to be allowed to do.

"Arya Lyanna Stark, you better get your skinny behind down here before I come up there myself!"

Arya startled at her mother's suddenly raised voice intruding upon her daydreams of future glory and excitement, grabbing a handful of green leaves to steady herself.

"Why? I'm not doing anything!" Arya complained, only able to see a portion of her mother down below at the base of the tree, her face wasn't visible, but the hands planted disapprovingly on her hips were.

"I am you mother, and you will do as you are told!" Catelyn said. "I've told you several times not to climb this tree. You're just a girl, and it's dangerous." Catelyn's voice was rough from anger, and edged with fear in regards to the high at which the girl was perched.

Arya's expression twisted at her mother's stupid reasons. She was sick of being a 'girl', and the danger was half the fun.

She glared down through the branches at her mother angrily. "No! You can't make me!" the girl voiced childishly. "Me and Little B'll stay up here as long as we want."

The older woman was confused for a moment, but then her eyes widened as she realized what her youngest daughter was talking about. "Bran?"

"Hi, Mummy!" Bran called happily from where he straddled one of the lower branches of the tree, his round face appearing through a the bushel of leaves that had concealed him from her side.

"Bran!" she gasped in horror. "Baby, you need to come down from there." Her tone was much more soft and gentle than it had been with Arya.

But Bran shook his head rapidly, his shoulder length, dark brown locks whipping around with the movement. "It's fun up here, Mummy." He bounced happily on the branch, his legs loose and kicking, making the leaves dance on their stems.

"Easy!" she held out her hands, almost as if she could grasp him and hold him tight from where she was. "Easy, baby. What are you doing up there? I've told you not go up there like you sister."

"Arry says I can't go any higher than this," he pouted. But then suddenly perked up, "but when I'm older, I can go as high as her!" He craned his neck back to look up at his big sister that he idolised, admiration shining in his brown eyes.

In truth, Bran was hardly twelve feet of the ground, while Arya was higher than even their two-story brownstone. She might be a kid, but she wasn't stupid! Bran had taken to climbing ever since he started walking, he was like a natural born monkey, one day, he'd even surpass her climbing skills—but until then, that was as far as she'd help/let the little boy.

Though Catelyn felt a bit relieved by this fact, that Arya was being safe even while she was knowingly disobeying and being dangerous, it didn't make her any more happy on the matter.

Even at 10, Sansa was polite, and haughty, and girlish, she liked pink and dolls; while Arya could be rude and brash, liked red and the mud. Catelyn could stand everything else, so long as she stopped that dreadful climbing. Every time she did so, it made the older woman's heart flutter in her chest with fear and anxiety, frustration too. She couldn't understand why her younger daughter didn’t want to be more prim and lady-like. She already had three sons, why couldn't she have another daughter?

She craned her own neck back to look from her son to her daughter, and felt her heart flutter again. She couldn't stand it. Didn't Arya know how dangerous it was? How high? One slip and she could… just thinking about it made her sick, a hand pressed over her racing heart. She spurned this bloody tree!

"Mum! Dad's back." Robb hollered from inside the house, poking his head outside the back door. "What are you doing?" he wondered, seeing his mother glaring up at the oak tree, her hands on her hips.

He followed her gaze and spotted his littlest sister, realization dawning, and then one of his little brothers in the lower branches and his blue eyes widened. His bit the inside of his cheek from verbalizing his reaction.

"Oh, you just wait young lady, until your father sees you!" Catelyn threatened, turning to go back into the house. "Robb, watch you brother and sister."

The 12-year-old came out onto the lawn in his socked feet, stopping at a better vantage point, and looked up at both his younger siblings. "You're in so much trouble, Ar!" he laughed, sounding rather delighted at the prospect.

"It sounds like you think I'm coming down!" she said haughtily. As long as she was up here, her mother couldn't get to her. As long as her mother couldn't get to her, than she couldn't be punished. It was as simple as that.

Robb just shook his head because they both knew well enough that as soon as Ned came, she wouldn't be able to get down fast enough. Not to mention how pissed Catelyn was about Bran's involvement in the whole thing.

"Higher than last time, Brando, I see. She'll make a monkey out of you yet," he winked at the kid, making the boy giggle happily.

"What about you?"

"Oh, I am not getting involved in this." Robb waved her challenge away.

"That's because you're a chicken," the girl scoffed. Robb's brows narrowed. "You couldn't get even half as high as I am," his blue eyes narrowed. She laughed at him and her greys eyes looked down at her little brother that was positioned below and to the left of her, looking backwards and up at her with brown eyes, "Pay him no mind, Bran, our darling big brother just doesn't have Stark know-how that we have!"

Oh, that cinched it, glare transforming his boyishly handsome face. Calling him a chicken was child's play, but saying he wasn't Stark-enough—no way could he let an insult like that slide off.

Arya gave a big grin as Robb took his socks off and came up to the tree. Stepping up onto a gnarled roots at the base of the tree, he was easily able to grab the bone thick, bare branch that stuck out from the trunk in a lonely area for just that purpose, it seemed. He pushed off with his feet, his toes scrambling at the bark as he pulled himself up to one of the main, thick extending arms from the crotch of the tree. He perched for a brief moment on a branch neighbouring Bran's, about twelve-or-so-feet from the ground and gave the boy a wink as he stood up and balanced on the branch before reaching above him and pulling himself up and up, using his feet just a much as his hands. A monkey very much himself as he paused for a brief break midway between his brother and sister, out of breath and sweat beading gently on his face.

"Want to say that again?" he said, looking up at her, her easily balanced near the top of the tree.

She smirked. "I, Arya Stark, do solemnly agree that you are a Stark and a monkey, through and through. Cross my heart,"

"Smartass," he had time to mutter, the corner of his lips twitching, before the backdoor squeaked open emitting both Stark parents.

"Robb?" Catelyn found her eldest son missing as she and her husband came out into the yard.

Embarrassed and shamed, he called out weakly. "Here."

A new anger burst inside of her as she looked up at the tree and now spotted her first born among the branches, as well. " _Robb_!" Everything that Catelyn needed to say was packed into that single word, his name.

Robb flinched visibly and Arya felt partially responsible for her brother's current ailment, but that was as far as she was willing to take the blame on this—it takes two, after all.

Robb started his decent, a bit slower than his climb upward. He finally passed Bran and thumped down onto the soft earth. He looked sheepish as he picked up his discarded socks and stepped up to his mother, where she smacked him across the back of his head.

"How could you encourage your brother and sister like that? You should be ashamed of yourself." Disappointment filled her words; he didn't even try and defend himself. She pointed with a stern finger. "Sit your behind on those steps, we'll be talking soon enough, you and I."

Robb swallowed, and with hunched shoulders went and sat on the back porch steps, dreading what was going to come, even though he already knew what it was. Sometimes it really sucked to be oldest—he always had to be the responsible one, didn't matter that he was still a kid, too.

When Ned came home from work, this was not what he had in mind on how he was going to spend the rest of the night—but could he expect anything less while having five children, each of them with Stark blood in their veins?

"That's mighty high up, son." Ned mused, looking up at his boy. He knew exactly how to get his son down, but Arya was going to be a whole other story. "You do that all by yourself?"

"Mm-hmm. Arya o’ly helped me a bit!" Bran told his father proudly.

Ned smiled softly at his son's enthusiasm, but his voice gentle/firm as he said with his arms held aloft: "Jump on down, bud. It almost dinner time, no need to worry your mother any more."

"Mm. OK!"

Catelyn stifled a cry as the seven-year-old swung his leg up and over to the other side and then pushed himself off with a cry of his own, completely opposite to his mother's, and dropped into his father's strong and waiting arms.

"Gottcha!" Ned cheered, squeezing his son and ticking his tummy, making the boy squirm and laugh before setting him on his own bare feet, turning him towards Catelyn, and give his butt a pat to get him moving.

Catelyn grabbed up her son eagerly and with relief, hugging him tightly. "Are you all right, baby?" she demanded of him, smoothing his long locks out of his eyes.

"Yes!" he groaned. Sure he wasn't a little kid either, but he hugged her back anyways.

Finally, she released him and sent him off to sit with Robb as they sorted Arya out. Two kids down, one to go—the most stubborn of them all.

"Come down now, won't you? You're scaring your mother half to death." Ned called up to his daughter civilly.

"Why should I care how she feels, when she doesn't care about how I feel?" the girl told him.

"I am your mother, and you will not disrespect me like that. Do you hear me? Stop acting like a spoiled brat and listen to your father!" Catelyn hollered from beside her husband, her anger going up a few notches.

"No!"

"No dinner for you, young lady!" she scolded, furious in response to her daughter's disrespect.

"I wasn't hungry, anyways!" Arya shouted back.

Catelyn was on the verge of actually growling; her third child always contending everything she was told or every rule that was set.

"Every week, it's one thing or another. What a tomboy!" Sansa rolled her eyes at the not so unfamiliar scene as she stood in the doorway. "Mum! Rickon's up from his nap and he soiled the bed." She reported distastefully, with all the manner of a task not befitting her (own graded) self-worth.

Robb furtively rolled his own eyes for a complexly different reason at his flame-haired sister as Catelyn looked over at her perfect little princess.

"Go, Cat." Ned murmured to his wife. "Take the others, I'll deal with our stubborn Little Wolf."

After a moment, she sighed. It appeared that she didn't have much options on the matter. She had four other children to take care of, it couldn't always be about Arya. Ned pecked her cheek before the woman made her way back to her other children. "Back inside, the lot of you!" she told her two boys and daughter firmly.

Arya watched her siblings disappear into the house, before her mother, who gave her a long parting look. The sun was slowly starting to get lower and lower, the lighting dimmer, making it a bit more difficult to locate his daughter so high in the tree.

"Am I allowed to ask what's caused this?" he asked after a long stretch of silence.

"I'm not a little kid!" she burst out, standing steady on her branch high in the tree, her arms sweeping through the air in an agitated and angry gesture. "I can take care of myself! Why doesn't anyone understand that?"

"The Seven Kingdoms won't recognize you as an adult until you're fifteen, but your mother and I will always think of you as our little girl." He explained understandably.

"I'm sick of being _little!"_

Ned could hear clearly both the meanings entangled in the word, even as Arya didn't actually say the words. "Like all of us, you're just going to have to suffer through it for six more years, Little Wolf. Is that what all this is about?"

Arya was silent for a long moment. "I don't get what Mum's problem is. I've climbed this tree a million times and nothing's happened!"

"She's you're mother, it's her job to worry. And you don't make it that much easier on her when you do things like this." He told her softly. "It's just how she shows how much she loves you. Now, won't you come down? It's getting dark and I do know you're hungry—I can hear you from all the way down here."

Her cheeks felt a little hot at that. It was just another thing to fight her mother about. She started to climb downward, her progress more easy than Robb’s. She knew this tree like an old friend.

"Arya!" Catelyn scolded, coming out of the house again, turning on the back light, even though it was at the in between time where it was dim outside, but not dark enough for the light to really make a difference. "I am sick of this foolishness! Stop acting like a spoiled brat and come down from there!"

That just revved Arya's previous feelings back up again. Can't the woman see that was exactly what she was doing? Couldn't even give her a second to get down before screaming at her.

Arya halted her process near a branch a bit higher from where Bran had perched. "I changed my mind!" she growled, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm fine right where I am!"

"I going to count to three—!"

"And then what?" the girl mocked, sliding her feet along the branch, the rough bark scraping the soles of her feet as she inched towards the tip, able to feel it bend slightly under her slight weight.

"Don't you dare mock me."

"Mm-mmm." Arya stuck her tongue out at her mother.

"Oh!" Catelyn exclaimed.

"Arya Lyanna Stark." Ned said severely, all soft tones vanishing. When Catelyn said it, it just didn't have the right affect. But Ned, with his usually patient and understanding demeanour, when he broke out the full name, he meant business. Arya gulped; she had pushed her luck too far. "Get down here this instant."

She inched back towards the trunk of the tree with sure but angry steps and then turned and started to lower herself to what she thought was the same branch that her little brother a had claimed, when a car alarm suddenly when off from the next house over and what sounded like all the dogs in the neighbourhood started to bark and howl in a caterwauling musical.

She startled and lost her grip.

She let out a yelp as she started to fall, grabbing for purchase, but only came away with some leaves. _Thump!_ She landed on the ground. There was a sound distinctly like a branch snapping— _Crack!_ —but in fact, it was Arya's right arm as she landed on it instead of _not_ landing on it.

Catelyn and Ned let out a cry and exclaim, running over to their fallen daughter.

The car alarm beep-booped and was turned off, and slowly, the dogs' musical started to die down.

"Arya! Arya!" Catelyn screamed, hysterical when Arya didn't answer her right away.

"Mum?!" Robb ran from the house, alarmed at hearing his mother screaming. Seeing his parents on the ground at the base of the tree sent true spikes of fear through his heart as he ran to them through the beam of the porch light fixture through the dark, his shadow stretched out large in front of him. "Dad? Arya?"

Ned's attention was on his girl. "Arya?" he pulled his daughter gently into his lap where she whimpered in pain. "Are you hurt?" he was clearly more controlled than his wife, his son a worried presence hugging his mother comfortingly.

The girl had never felt a pain like it before. "My arm," she told her father, holding her unresponsive limb to her chest. Sharp pains were shooting through her limb, stinging and burning. Tears pricked her eyes and she gritted her teeth, pressing into her father's broad chest.

"Let's get into the light." He grunted as he climbed to his feet with her slight body still in his arms .

Robb helped his mother to her feet, murmuring quiet reassurances that Arya seemed to be okay. This seemed to help ground the woman, and she hurried beside him to the porch.

Ned sat the girl in a plastic chair on the porch, gently taking Arya’s small arm in his big hands. Despite his gentle touch, and _shushing_ reassurances, the pain still twisted her features. "It's broken." He released her arm and she cradled it once more, she gave a hard sniff but that was it. "Are you hurt anywhere else, sweetheart?" he ran his fingers through her wild locks of hair, picking out a leaf and twig or two tangled there. He scoured her with his grey gaze—a few scrapes and bruises, but otherwise she seemed okay.

"Ned?" Catelyn's voice cracked.

"She'd alright, Cat." Ned gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. "A broken arm and a few scrapes."

Catelyn's gasp of relief was shaky, and Robb gave an explosive sigh of his own. If she'd been any higher...

"Robb, grab the car keys." Ned told his son. "We're going to have to take a trip to Pack Heart Clinic."

Robb nodded and ran back inside.

"Come on, sweetheart."

Arya started to stand, but Ned scooped her back up into his arms. She didn't try and protest the matter. As much as she wanted to prove that she was just fine, she did feel a bit sick, and her bruised knees were a bit too shaky for her liking.

"Arya!" Bran looked about ready to cry at the sight of his big sister in such pain in his father's arms. "Mummy?"

"Oh, baby!" Catelyn quickly picked up the seven-year-old in a manner that befitted a toddler like Rickon, and pressed her cheek to hers. "It'll be all right. Don't you worry!"

"I'll call you from the Clinic," Ned told his wife, stopping briefly at her side.

Catelyn nodded. "Oh, Arya!" She pressed her lips to the girls crown. "Can't you see how dangerous climbing is, now?" she admonished.

Arya gritted her teeth against the pain and against her tongue to keep from retorting. Even now, with a broken arm her mother had to try and stick it to her. Instead, she glowered silently at her father's Adam's apple. If her mother thought something like this was going to stop her from climbing, then she had another thing coming.

Ned continued through the kitchen, Robb racing after him with hastily put on sneakers and carrying a pair of Arya's own shoes and the car keys.

Ned put her in the backseat, and Robb climbed in beside her as the man got into the driver's seat. The boy didn't need to be told whether or not to get in, he would've come anyways; there was no way he was going to leave his little sister.

The car bumped from the driveway and onto the road, and Arya gave a groan at the jolts in her arm.

"We'll be there soon." Ned murmured, driving down their street, stopping at a stop sign, turning left, and driving along a bit more busy road, passing cars' headlights' briefly filling the interior of the station wagon with light.

Robb openly looked at his sister with worry as each little bump made the pain flare in her grey eyes, even as she stifled the sounds most of the time.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer!" she bit out at him through her gritted teeth, turning to look at her brother finally; she could feel his blue gaze drilling into the side of her face with all his brooding.

And suddenly, just like that, the hard worry flushed from his system as her simple comment. "I figured I would save you from the embarrassment of falling out of a tree that a seven-year-old clearly had no trouble getting out of." He retorted happily, relieved.

That dig enabled her to forget the pain. No way was she going to stand for that, she had dignity after all. Even with her arm like this, she would never back down. "You and me. Anytime. Let's go!"

"Who do you think I am?" Robb said in mock offence. "To take advantage of you in such a state—it'll be like taking candy from a baby!"

"Ha! We both know that Rickon had you beat fair and square."

Robb glared. "I'm doing you a favour, Stark."

"I think it's the other way around, _Stark_. The only way you have a chance of beating me, is in the condition I'm in right now!" Arya blew a raspberry at him mockingly.

Robb returned the favour.

"Cut it out, you two." Ned said, seeing the clear signs of a raspberry war in the making, driving through an intersection. "No one's climbing anything for a very long time, got it? You'll grow out of it when you're older."

He saw the clear, defiant look on his Little Wolf's face in the review mirror, even if it was lined with pain, and heaved a heavy sigh. It didn't seem that the stubborn girl planned on it, no matter Catelyn or his feelings on the matter. But he found a smile on his lips in the brief, flashing shadows as he passed on-coming cars, that was his girl—a Stark through and through!

_-end-_  
** ********Game/of/Thrones******** ** __  



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